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This then is Beauty primally: it is entire and omnipresent as
an entirety; and therefore in none of its parts or members
lacking in beauty; beautiful thus beyond denial. Certainly it
cannot be anything [be, for example, Beauty] without being wholly
that thing; it can be nothing which it is to possess partially or
in which it utterly fails [and therefore it must entirely be
Beauty entire].
If this principle were not beautiful, what other could be? Its
prior does not deign to be beautiful; that which is the first to
manifest itself- Form and object of vision to the intellect-
cannot but be lovely to see. It is to indicate this that Plato,
drawing on something well within our observation, represents the
Creator as approving the work he has achieved: the intention is
to make us feel the lovable beauty of the autotype and of the
Divine Idea; for to admire a representation is to admire the
original upon which it was made.
It is not surprising if we fail to recognise what is passing
within us: lovers, and those in general that admire beauty here,
do not stay to reflect that it is to be traced, as of course it
must be, to the Beauty There. That the admiration of the Demiurge
is to be referred to the Ideal Exemplar is deliberately made
evident by the rest of the passage: "He admired; and determined
to bring the work into still closer likeness with the Exemplar":
he makes us feel the magnificent beauty of the Exemplar by
telling us that the Beauty sprung from this world is, itself, a
copy from That.
And indeed if the divine did not exist, the transcendently
beautiful, in a beauty beyond all thought, what could be lovelier
than the things we see? Certainly no reproach can rightly be
brought against this world save only that it is not That.
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